in 1996 by a real-estate investor from Seattle named John Nute; he put in free Internet access, sponsored live music and poetry readings, and made the restrooms available to anyone who walked in the door. The Ground Floor is across the street from Centennial Plaza, one of those sterile brick-and- concrete urban parks, and, once the café opened, the two places quickly filled with kids. ''A lot of us misfits sort of found each other by hanging out at Centennial Plaza and the Ground Floor," a seventeen-year-old named Barbara Lawhon eXplained to me one afternoon. "We'd sit around writing po- etry and playing music. It was a really big deal." By 1997, Nute says, Friday-night crowds at Centennial Plaza had grown to two hundred teen-agers. Some of them were skateboarders and roller- bladers, who began doing a move on the park benches called grinding, which tears the benches to shreds. By the next summer, a city ordinance forbid- ding skateboarding and rollerblading in Centennial Plaza was being strongly enforced, and Nute's business dropped off by more than two-thirds. The year before the ordinance was enforced was one of the only times Bar- bara liked living in Midland. "Growing up here sort of sucked for me," she ex- plained. "We were basically poor. Mid- land is all about money. All the rich kids get into upper-level classes, even though they can't spell. In the first day of honors English in eighth grade, our teacher made us stand up and say our names and why we wanted to be in an honors class, and then say what our parents did for a living. And your par- ents' occupation is listed on the roster for band and for some of the other clubs, too. It's gross." In Midland, the nickname for spoiled preppies is "white hats," because of the fashion for wear- ing white painter hats with college logos. I told her I'd gone to the Mid- land Park Mall earlier in the week and had overheard a young guy in a white hat talking to two girls who were working at The Athlete's Foot. "Mid- land has a lot, a lot, of money," the young guy was saying, as the girls nod- ded enthusiastically. "There are more Mercedeses here than anywhere in the count In other places, when kids get ' RARE DALI PRINTS I : If you own, or are considering the purchase of a Salvador Dali print.... Our exclusive catalog features full-color pictures of more than 500 signed limited edition Salvador Dali prints. Each print is fully documented by Albert Field, curator of the Salvador Dali Archives, and guaranteed authentic. The catalog, "Salvador Dali: A Retrospective of Master Prints," is a must SALVADOR DALI r :j' \ .-' "' , : '; " ; <", ",' :. J , ; '",;" --., , . .....Co; s ; '" ,:\i,< 1'- I, ' , :':t ." . , rl 'i" ,,,\, A RETROSPECTIVE OF MASTER PRINTS for anyone interested in works signed by Dali. 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